Where did the names of the months of the year come from?
Months of the Year We inherited our calendar from the Romans. Of course there have been changes over the centuries, but the ideas and structure have remained largely the same. In the original Roman calendar there were only 10 named months and two rather murkily defined months in the winter. The year then actually began in March, which is natural since this was when the flowers of spring and the renewal of agricultural activity began. The months of the year came about as a way to mark time and break up the long seasons into manageable segments. The moon provided the time piece. A cycle of the moon was observable and regular. However, the moon had two aspects that would later cause problems for those who craved regularity and consistency over a long number of years. The problem is that the cycles of the moon are not an exact number of days and also do not evenly divide into a year. This meant there would be a lot of fiddling around with the calendar and its months over the centuries. The
